Re: This particular part of - there are three legal systems within the UK, England & Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland; though England & Wales* (where this was ruled) accounts for over 80% of the population and probably a greater proportion of businesses and contracts.
They also have a common enough history and basis that it's unlikely that rulings in Northern Ireland and Scotland would be substantially different.
* Wales now has it's own legislature so Welsh law may have minor differences in certain areas but this wouldn't be one of them as it's not an area the Welsh assembly have law making power over.
I'm pretty pro-filesharing (whatever that means) but I just don't understand what the big deal about IP addresses is... Would someone mind explaining it to me?
Fingerprints aren't people either, but they can help build a case against a murderer/whatever. What's the issue with "This IP did this, the ISP says you had that IP, it's you or someone related to you that did this Q.E.D."?
The ISP cannot say you had this address, but only your computer. With public Wifi, several people will have the same IP address. The possibility of being hacked or having someone "borrow" your connection are also possibilities. Households, businesses, and schools may share a computer.
Sharing a fingerprinting, hacking a fingerprint, or being away from your fingerprint for a short period of time is nearly impossible. Your fingerprint is intimately associated with you, therefore the link to your identity is stronger. The law doesn't have to enforce this link because it is natural, biological. You are the owner of the fingerprint.
The danger with treating IP addresses as a strong link to a person is that a court is effectively legislating that IP addresses should be tied to a particular person who is responsible for it. That means you cannot share your IP address with others and cannot share a public computer.
Yeah but you know, and I know, that's a rubbish argument. Absolutely it could happen and that person obviously should bear no responsibility. But an IP address is enough to bring the argument to that point.
Pretty big leap to go from "Well MAYBE someone else used this IP over this persons MAYBE unsecured wireless" to "I guess we can't use the IP as evidence of anything" (Which is the gist, I guess?)
Don't get me wrong, I think we should draw-and-quarter the people filing these lawsuits -- I just have trouble seeing how an IP address is meaningless. Is IP address information still used in cases against spammers or crackers?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that IP addresses provide no evidence whatsoever or that they shouldn't be used as evidence at all. Certainly, they do narrow the possibilities down. However, by dismissing arguments of hacking or sharing an IP address as rubbish, an IP address effectively becomes a person's identity regardless of whether they can completely control it. Since many users are not technically savvy, they cannot control what happens at an IP address. Hence, parents and grandparents get sued for their kids behavior, coffee shops with open wifi face litigation, schools and businesses must enforce draconian security measures just to enforce a strong tie between a person and an IP when that tie is not natural.
It can't be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt (very important) that the owner of the modem is also the person who committed the crime.
The user of the IP at the time the crime is committed is at issue here, not the ownership of the modem.
Looking upthread, this has already been explained to you several times. I've kept my own explanation as clear as I can in hopes that it's the one that gets it through to you.
